Boy or Girl?

Ultrasound can't determine the gender of the child until twenty weeks. I'm assuming that has something to do with size and visibility of it's nether regions, but that's just a guess. It does raise the question, do we find out or not?
Kate and I differ on this one.
She really really wants to know. She says that this is because she wants a girl, and if it's a boy she wants time to get used to the idea. She always qualifies this by pointing out that if it is a boy she's sure she'll love it just the same. That's a relief to me, since after all, I'm a boy.
My own suspicion is that it's not that (this is my theory, which Kate will know about for the first time when she reads this, and also, which is mine). My theory is that it's just because Kate's a scientist at heart, and as a scientist at heart, it's her nature to want all the available data. The sex (or gender) is another piece of data to collect.
I don't think that knowing ahead of time is necessary. I tend to figure that the capacity to do this is relatively new from the standpoint of human medical science, and as far as I can tell, not being able to know in advance hasn't done much damage to us as a species over the last couple thousand years.
I'm not fighting this one. I figure we have eighteen years of potentially volatile disagreements on many more important things to look forward to. This one just ain't that important.
What is interesting is the responses I get from people when I tell them this.
The most common one is that it's a good thing because we'll be able to plan ahead more, you know, what color to paint the room, what clothes to buy, stuff like that.
Really?
In this day and age we're still ascribing colors to gender identities?
Ok, so blue for a boy, pink for a girl, right?
Could we cause a gender identity crisis by swapping those colors?
What if we painted the room black? Would the kid be goth? Or a Rolling Stones fan (if you don't get that reference, stop reading this blog and go to iTunes RIGHT THIS MINUTE).
Green would be nice, earth and nature and all that. But not green and gold. I could care less about the gender or gender identity, but I'd be pretty upset if we end up with a Packers fan.
I'm for painting the room purple. I just like purple.
And of course, if we know the gender we can stock up on gender appropriate toys.
I had dolls when I was a kid. I don't think it made me whatever that's supposed to stereotypically make a boy. I think dolls are a great idea. So is sports gear.
Typically, when we have to give gifts to young children we try to cross stereotypical gender lines. We like to by toy construction worker stuff for girls and toy cooking stuff for boys.
For those of you who don't know, by the way, I do almost all the cooking, and Kate does all the construction. Kate is a pretty good cook, as it happens, she just doesn't enjoy cooking. I am all but completely useless with tools, though I am an excellent hauler of heavy stuff like drywall.
Kate refinished our basement almost entirely on her own (I did haul a lot of the heavy stuff downstairs, but that was all). And by refinished I mean framed, wired, drywalled, and finished. The only thing that she didn't do was the floor and the necessary new duct work.
I cooked a lot of yummy meals while she was doing it.